Setting realistic sales goals is a must if you want to achieve the kind of success that you need to keep your business going. But, where do you start? How do you know the goals are right? What can you do to improve your goal setting? If you ask and answer the following questions you’ll have a clearer idea of what a realistic sales goal is for your business.

* What Are Your Income Goals? – How much money do you need to earn in order to provide yourself and your family with the lifestyle that you desire? Don’t be minimalistic here. Choose the real number you want and need to earn to stay in business long term.

* How Big Is Your Audience? – Is the audience large enough to support the income goals you want to achieve? If not, how can you grow and expand the audience? Alternatively, can you offer even more products and services to the same audience to increase the lifetime value of each customer?

* What Is the Price of Your Product? - Have you priced your products or services accurately and fairly for your market? Don’t seek to be the cheapest, but seek to provide value in your offerings. The higher priced your product or service, the more value you’ll have time to provide.

* Do You Have Sales Partners? – If you have joint venture partners or affiliates, you will have to give some of the income to them. Are you ready for that expense? Do the numbers still work when you factor in these expenses? Chances are they will if your product is digital and easily produced.

* What Are Your Expenses? – How much is your break-even number for only your business without you taking a cut? This is an important number that should be added to your income goals, because it’s the cost of doing business.

* What Are Current Trends? – There are no VHS sales people any longer that’s because the product is defunct. How are trends looking in terms of your product or service, and how can you improve or change to keep up with trends?* Are Your Expectations Realistic? – No one makes the close 100 percent of the time, so are your ideas of your close rate right? For the most part you can expect a 2 to 4 percent close rate if you have a product your audience wants.

* Are Your Goals SMART? - Goals need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time related (Wikipedia). If they’re not all of these things, then it’s imperative that you sit down and write down your goals in that way. Don’t just say that you want to earn 50,000 dollars in a year; say exactly how you’ll do that.

Link to Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

The problem with unrealistic sales goals it that you won’t succeed and you won’t have a map to success. That will make you less motivated to continue going in your business. But when you set realistic goals based on legitimate numbers and models, you can find a path to success.